Rapid Shift

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Excerpt cross-posted from Midwest Energy News. Read the complete article here. The Green Tea Coalition and the group Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed — headed by former Republican Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr. — are mobilizing in states where they say policies conducive to rooftop solar are being attacked by large utilities that feel threatened by increasing amounts of distributed …

“You have got to ask yourself why had this not been done by the major analysts – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch or analytical firms. To some degree they were lapping up what the energy companies were saying. They’re the ones who do the forecasts.” The following is an excerpt from an article at RTCC: Terrifying Math: How Carbon …

Germany’s Rhineland coalfields will become the centre point of the international fight against dirty energy this weekend as over a thousand protesters from across 45 countries come together to stop the world’s largest coal diggers in their tracks. Targeting RWE’s opencast lignite mine, the Ende Gelände protest – translated as “here and no further” or “it’s finished now” – aims to …

Cross-posted from Gas2 and Clean Technica Ask EV drivers what they don’t like about their electric car experience and the chances are most of them would say charging their vehicles away from home is their least favorite thing. Now, researchers in England are exploring the possibility of making wireless recharging available on some motorways, the English equivalent to our interstate highways. …

Eight of the 17 GOP figures currently jostling for their party’s presidential nomination have between them attracted a bonanza of at least $62m so far this year from sources either directly involved in polluting industries or with close financial ties to them. Three Republican contenders stand out as recipients of this fossil fuel largesse: the Republican climate change denier-in-chief, Ted Cruz; …

From http://grist.org/science/in-china-coal-pollution-kills-someone-every-21-seconds/ Air pollution from the burning of coal kills more than 4,000 people a day in China, accounting for one in six premature deaths and 1.6 million deaths annually, according to a study in the journal PLOS One. “It’s a very big number,” study author Robert Rohde told the AP. “It’s a little hard to wrap your mind around the numbers. Some of …

“Danger days” aren’t too common now, for weather, but climate change is about to make them a lot more common over the next 15 years. A danger day is when the combination of heat and humidity (also known as the heat index) make it feel like it’s 105 degrees F or hotter. Warming temperatures are about to push U.S. cities into a …

EPA’s website allows you to search air by zip code, but what if it was as easy to assess air quality, block by block, as it is to find grocery stores? An experimental collaboration between Google and Aclima, a tech company that specializes in networking environmental sensors, has big dreams of doing just that. “It’s like a human body,” said Davida …

Algae blooms are becoming increasingly common in bodies of water around the globe, as warmer temperatures and increased nutrient runoff (largely from agriculture) fuel their growth. And they’re expected to get worse with climate change, as more frequent heavy storms wash fertilizer into bodies of water and overwhelm pipes that carry both storm water and sewage. A recent report conducted …

Earth Overshoot Day marks the day each year by which people have used more natural resources than the Earth can regenerate in a single year. It’s basically a balance sheet for global accounting. When you start to spend more than you earn, it does not become immediately apparent. But, eventually, you go bankrupt. carbon emissions are getting worse. “By putting carbon in …